L'Attente The Wait
by Nehan
Summary: A few years after childish mistakes and drama, two friends meet again. Did they sober up? Did they pursue their angers toward each other? This is set in a realistic context.
1. The Wait

Unlike the widely spread impressions, I don't even hate people that much. How much hate could a twelve year old have toward the world, when he hasn't even seen hate in others yet?

It has only been five years since I've left my village and my previous lives to wither and burn. Such a brief time has passed and already I feel like an old man, musing, nursing his childhood memories and sour mistakes with a forgiving chuckle for such innocence.

Only I find no humor in the kind of mistakes and foolishness I made.

Time and perspective make a strange pair of lovers; they give either distance or proximity to the past, putting grave and petty things behind us all. It took some time and much experience, but I learned to smile once again, to enjoy the big and little things. And realize that I had already lost everything, so how much more could I lose by trying to reach for the moon?

Time and perspective make a strange pair of lovers, because sometimes, they have the most violent of altercations.

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Lately, I've been waiting for something.

For someone, actually. According to the lovely Miss Feng, my attention is lax, as is my teaching. And she's right, it's barely as if my own students were doing the teaching. Repitions I made were often remarked, dates were forgotten and my gaze always drifted to the glass paneled doors while I recited my lectures.

One afternoon, finally, Miss Feng knocked lightly at my classroom's door; there was a man wishing to see me, rather urgently. I readied myself to see an angry and concerned father questioning my teaching abilities, and in walked Naruto Uzumaki.

I can't tell how many times I had played a similar scene in my head for the past few years, expecting joy, tears and merriment… before chiding myself for such fantastic delirium. Such wishful thinking.

My immediate reaction was less comely; my eyes widened as I literally dropped my two heavy books on my right foot.

Naruto simply stared back at me unmovingly, his face white as chalk. He blinked several times without saying a word, cleared his throat. "are you sure this is the psychology department?" he faintly asked my confused assistant.

- Yes, yes this is Mr. Inoue, he's the-

- Oh no that's alright, we've met.

I cleared my throat.  
- Miss Feng, would you mind giving us a moment?

For a while after she left, Naruto and I simply looked at each other, scrutinizing our every detail. I drank in so much of his presence that for a moment, I thought I would drown.

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	2. Flow

We were seated a café near the Kusuri Institute, and my old friend had been staring forcefully/intensely at his hands for quite some time now. Finally, he looked up.

"Why do you go by the name Tadashi Inoue?"

I shrugged. "Convenience, I suppose. It's much easier to get by like this without the encumbrance of a name like Uchiha." After a short pause, I finally ventured.

"It's been quite a while Naruto. How are you?"

"Good, good. I'm doing ok", he whispered.

When his tea arrived, he nearly pried it from the maid's hands, as if a steamy mug could save him from such an awkward situation. And I, mercilessly, kept my steady gaze upon him, saying nothing else. What else could I say? Nothing could be spoken without breaking the tenuous contact we were trying to keep, if not sever.

Suddenly he started talking, carefully measuring his every word.

"After you left, I found time to involve myself a bit more in the village and with the people I knew less; I spend a surprising amount of time with Tenten, she's actually a really cool girl. I dated her for a while and, well, it's going pretty good, he said with a warm smile to a person I couldn't see. Sakura is well on her way preparing her official thesis concerning drugs and their effects on chakra, with Tsunade's help. I help them but mostly, with Kakashi-sensei, I'm doing my own research on psychological trauma in ninjas."

"Excellent initiative. So you've been working alongside Sakura? How is she?"

"As well as she can, she's very, very good at scaring the hell out of the students when it comes to keeping them in check", he chuckled.

"I can imagine, on that at least she hasn't changed…"

We kept making small talk for another five minutes, during which he seemed increasingly ill at ease; and I, cruelly, kept the steady flow of nonsense pour out of my mouth.

Then I stopped.

"Naruto, what is it."

He looked up at me, baffled, incredulous.

"What is it? There's something you need to say, don't you? Just say it." I repeated.

"Hold on. So… you're trying to tell me that I can tell you anything, absolutely anything, and you'll just endorse it? You'll just let it pass upon you?" He was now shaking in anger.

"No that's not what I meant…

He cut me short with an unusually quiet tone:

"Sasuke Uchiha. Since the day I was born, I have _never_ asked for a single thing. Ever. I think that's why having your friendship was like a godsend to me, no questions were asked and no consequences were bound to that link, not at first at least. I came in the Hidden Flowers village looking for anything _but_ you, for once. Sasuke, I have erased… every bit of information and sentiment I had for you because simply, I was tired of yearning, of waiting, of searching, of _begging_. When you left me for dead, broken, you also shattered the last sliver of a chance to the friendship we ever had." He snorted. "You were never alone, boy. Even though I was always more likely to understand you, you were _never_ alone, despite your constant brooding and whining. I swear, you're just… just… _sitting_ there looking all prim and sympathetic and warm? How the _hell_ am I supposed to answer to this, Sasuke Uchiha?"

The hurt and resent he had tried so desperately to mask now battered forcefully against my walls, and all I could do, as I ever did, was to watch him. Naruto had never been a quiet man; but under his skin, behind his angry stare I saw the sole thing that I ever feared in him: nothing at all. The passionate young man who had chased me through lands and sea, through time, who threatened to break my bones and drag me back to a life I desperately wanted more dead than alive…

Was he gone?

"You know what, I'm not so sure what I was expecting either", I finally said, twisting my cup in my tense hands. "Naruto, stupid as this may sound, I was almost wishing for a dream, a redemption. Almost wishing for a deserved punishment during those many years. I've caught myself often thinking, 'If ever I don't make it this time, it's ok'. I waited for you, for that deliverance".  
A long pause passed before I spoke again.

"Naruto, I'm sorry. I really want you to understand these words: I am truly sorry. I was an idiot when I was younger; somehow I believed you deserved to feel the same pain I had been feeling, when you were probably in worse pain than I. you acted like such a retard, and you were so damn loud too, but I deserve the fool's hat. I'm sorry you ever had to build a home for me where I had no right to return".

I'm not sure what had fueled the desire, the need for me to say all I had said. But somehow, pride had forgotten its place in my world, for the first time in such a long time. And he was now staring hard at me, almost as if I was about to dissolve before him.

Once again, I looked at him from the rim of my cup, and waited.

_I would've given my world just for a smile from him then._


End file.
